Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is one of the most common causative organisms of hospital and non-hospital infections. Representative types of Staphylococcus aureus, S. aureus include: Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Methicillin resistant coagulase negative Staphylococcus (MR-CNS), Methicillin sensitive Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA), and Methicillin sensitive coagulase negative Staphylococcus (MS-CNS). Among these bacteria, the MRSA is one of the most frequent hospital bacteria and is infected with patients having a weak immunity. However, there were only a few antibacterial drugs developed, and thus, the infection rate of the patients by the bacterium is very high.
Currently, MRSA infection can be diagnosed by (1) antibiotics sensitivity tests on the cultured bacteria, (2) detection of genes specific to MRSA from the colonies of cultured bacteria, and (3) detection of proteins specific to MRSA from the colonies of cultured bacteria. While most hospitals use method (1), it takes at least 2-3 days before test results are obtained. For small-sized hospitals, particularly, the method of detecting infection by observing proteins specific to MRSA in the cultured bacteria is hard to be performed as this method may take one or two extra days. As such, antibiotics are often applied without conducting diagnostic tests. In practice, the methods of (2) and (3) are too complicated for general clinics to conduct, such that those are performed for the purpose of research only.
With those currently available methods, detection of MRSA infection is delayed, and it is often the cases that a right time point for treatment is missed or that improper antibiotics are applied. As such, there exists a strong need for development of a method and a kit for detecting MRSA in a prompt and accurate manner.